


Pesterstuck Intermission: Rose's Walkthrough

by curiousDeviator



Series: Pesterstuck [2]
Category: Homestuck
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-11-23 12:39:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11402586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curiousDeviator/pseuds/curiousDeviator
Summary: Kanaya recovers an ancient server that was floating through the furthest ring. On it are several video files.





	1. Caveats and Condolences, or, Kanaya: First Contact

Your name is Kanaya Maryam and you have found several video files of interest. You have downloaded the files onto your husktop and released the hardware that it was held on back into the furthest ring, where it belongs. When you did you thought you heard the horrorterrors rumbling in contentment. A frightening sound. You returned to the meteor shortly afterwards.

The file launches an ascii table and a video link.   
1\. Caveats and Condolences........................... 0:00  
2\. Walkthrough (Incomplete).......................... 5:30  
2.1. An Examination of the Basics.................... 15:01  
2.2. So your cruxtruder is ticking. Do this to live.. 17:40  
2.3. The Long and Short. The Medium too.............. 20:23  
some stuff about captcha codes and punch card alchemy 24:06  
C. Appendix 3 -- Screen Captures, pt. 1.............. 29:18  
?. Rose: Egress......................................  30: 34

You decide to only listen to the first chapter, to entertain whatever it may be. On goes your husktop, and on clicks the recording. You must admit it’s terrible quality, but there she sits. You’d guess her name is ‘Rose’ whatever weird short name that is. After a moment of silence she begins to speak.

“I'd be inclined to dispense with the trite even under less pressing circumstances. Needless to say I'll forego the inscrutable ASCII banner which typically heralds the striking freefall of these documents.” So that explains that. Nice. You’ve always found those annoying. 

“ I'll also resist the urge to brandish any copyright marks, or the particular neurosis that concerns itself with the theft of the utterly mundane. I'll allow other deranged prospectors to stake claims on their worthless plots as the woods burn around them.” Literally, so it seems. Firelight glints outside the window of the narrator’s block. 

“My introduction will be sparse. There will be no majestic prose blustering into the sails of a galleon as we embark on this voyage together. Nor will there be any hamfisted prose whipping its limbs under a bedsheet like a retarded ghost, for that matter. I won't set the stage, or dim the lights. The mood, you will see, will be set soon enough.” She leans forward, setting her elbows on her desk somewhere below where the webcam can pick up.

“Since you are reading this, chances are you have installed this game on your   
computer already. If this is true, like many others, you have just participated in   
bringing about the end of the world. But don't beat yourself up about it. There was never anything you could have done to prevent it.” This girl. This alien, this strange being, is playing SGRUB? Sure you saw it in the title, in some weird format notably ‘SBURB’ but you expected a gag, nothing less. Something to pass the time as you floated through space.

“The end is happening right now, as I type, and as you read. I have come to understand that we were always doomed through our collective ignorance, and now further doomed by those few who know, and struggle to flee. If you're lucky, you'll be among the smaller subset of the latter who are successful.” What universe did this walkthrough come from? Could it be the one behind you, the one that created you? Or was it perhaps the one you created.

Rose waves her hands around in the air as if to clear it from the prose she was about to launch into. “What I mean is, while that game you installed is just one more grinding slab of rock sealing our planet's crypt, it is also your only hope to live. 

She checks her watch, and then looks somewhere below the camera, probably at the screen, and assumedly her client player. “I'm presently faced with the same conundrum as you, and though I speak with more experience, my own outcome is far from assured. I will ‘play the game’, as much of it as there is to play, and record my findings here. If you want to live, you will do as I instruct.” Rose looks one more time at the camera, a slight smirk that doesn’t quite reach her eyes playing on her face.  
“My condolences.” And then the video shuts off.


	2. Walkthrough (Incomplete

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hell yeah. Almost 2k words. This killed me.

The continue button glows bright green at the bottom of the walkthrough. You wonder how ‘tentacleTherapist’ was able to do all this formatting when the world was ending. It’s helpful, but must have taken precious seconds.

You click on the button. Rose’s now familiar face flickers onto the screen. The timestamp shows this is being recorded about half an hour after the last one. Behind her the windows show flames hurtling past at regular intervals. She smirks and rests her head on her hands, propping her elbows up on the desk as well.

“Upon connecting with the client user, you, the server user, will be met with a control panel allowing you to manipulate your co-player's environment. You will find that you are allowed to deploy four items at no expense.” She holds up four fingers, prepped to count off as she continues. “Three of these are rather large machines, and one is a punch card.”

Deep breath. Rose says the next section very quickly, you end up having to pause and restart from the beginning several times to catch all of it. “It's quite possible that you have already deployed some of these items before reading this. If this is the case, and you have activated the machine called the "cruxtruder" such that it displays a countdown,” Rose grips the sides of the webcam, a grave expression of the utmost stress warping her face. “YOU MUST PROCEED TO THE NEXT SECTION OF THIS WALKTHROUGH IMMEDIATELY. The life of the client user depends on it, and if your co-player has activated this device in your environment too, then yours does as well.” The video automatically pauses, and a bright red CRUXTRUDER ACTIVATED? button shines directly underneath.    


Kanaya has already passed through that stage. You wonder if that means that this was recorded when they were just discovering SBURB. Wish that another universe didn’t have to fall prey to this hideous cycle. She presses the play button and the video continues. “But if not, please refrain from doing anything with the cruxtruder, aside from merely deploying it. This will buy us some time to think things through properly, and to go over the basics of the game before you find your soft, easily-punctured head in the jaws of the lion.” Lion. That’s a highblood term for… some variety of meowbeast you believe. Rose cracks another joke, this one probably even better than the last, but you were too busy trying to remember whether the lion was the one with the mane, spots, or stripes.

Rose continues, and a nice pop up follows with each item mentioned. You can’t help but wonder how long this took to edit. “As mentioned, there are four items to consider, each playing a role in a process which appears to have a singular purpose: to manufacture objects out of thin air.” Well. She’s partially right. You’ll give her this one. “The designers of the game, judging by the language used, regard this process as a sort of alchemy. This may allude to complexities in the production process yet to present themselves.” Rose sighs and waves her hand in the air, a nice segue to the next topic. “But for now, the variety of objects you are able to create remains quite limited.”  
“The items in question are the CRUXTRUDER (again, tread lightly with this one), the TOTEM LATHE, the ALCHEMITER, and the PRE-PUNCHED CARD.” A timestamp accompanies every device’s corresponding word that pops up onto the screen. “I will describe how these devices work in conjunction with each other, and I will use the analogy of having a key made at a hardware store to help you understand.” A what. You hope the analogy will make sense. You certainly aren’t a master in xenoculture. You wonder if that’s who Rose was expecting. To your own surprise, you find a nervous twinge appearing in your blood pusher. Intriguing.

First, deploy all of these objects in convenient proximity to each other. Be sure not to block doors or pathways with them. You can always ‘revise’ the dimensions of rooms to make space for them, but I'd advise against this, or even experimenting with the function.” Speaking from experience, from as far as you can tell. Though the self deprecating grin doesn’t hurt to drop hints. “Doing so comes at the expense of ‘build grist’, a commodity which appears to be at a premium at the onset, and one you'd best be advised to save for later..”   
A large title flashes in the middle of the screen. Something you guess will be happening several times in the very near future.

\-- THE CRUXTRUDER --   


The headbanded figure on the screen takes a deep breath. “Removing the lid signals the moment your life becomes a great whirling batshit pandemonium, somewhat resembling the chaos of an especially ethnic wedding. Somewhere, a soused uncle deliberately shatters china on the floor. Muddy livestock is decorated, and then lost track of. The question ‘Who's mule is this?’ at times can be heard over the din.” Rose tilts her head and stares at the camera gravely, all traces of humor gone from her voice.  “This is now your reality.”  
She waves her hand, still speaking in an accelerated manner, the only sign of her mounting nervousness. “But aside from that, it marks the beginning of the process I am about to describe. The countdown begins, yes. Also, an entity called the ‘Kernelsprite’ is released.  


But neither of these things are all that relevant to this process, to my knowledge. More on these things later.” Timestamps glow for a moment and then disappear.   


“What is relevant is the un-lidded cruxtruder's ability to dispense ‘cruxite dowels’. It will dispense at least one, though I suspect it is capable of producing more, given parameters I'm not yet familiar with. In my key-making analogy, these dowels represent the uncarved pieces of metal which the hardware store employee retrieves from a drawer or a rack, and sets about carving into a key. The two following items are needed to do the carving.” No timestamps this time. Guess she wants you, or whoever the viewer might be, to listen carefully. See, it is these games of meow and squeakbeast that you excell at. The snarky horseshit meter must wait though. At present, this is the important part.   


\-- THE PRE-PUNCHED CARD -- Title card. Expected.   


“It is a simple sylladex card containing an item. There is evidence to suggest the specific item it contains is variable from session-to-session. The card I deployed contained a blue apple. Yours may be different. It shouldn't matter, hopefully.” You’re glad your entrance item wasn’t particularly difficult to figure out. You worry that Rose’s will be.

“Additionally, the card as you may guess is ‘punched’, like one used with antique computing systems. The pattern of holes comprises data, which I believe corresponds to the instructions for creating the item the card contains. That it is ‘pre-punched’ suggests there is a way to punch an un-punched card, possibly imprinting it with the data for the item it contains, though no mechanism for this has presented itself yet.” Rose shifts in her seat, adjusting her skirt as another streak of fire lights her from behind for a moment. “But the data on the card cannot be used to create the item directly. There is a middleman. That middleman is the totem lathe.” Three. Two. One.   


\-- THE TOTEM LATHE -- Titlecard. You’ve got this timing down.   


“This is essentially the key carving machine. It will carve into your cruxite dowel a pattern of grooves and contours, the sort which makes a key unique.” Rose types something quickly into her keyboard, concentrating on something somewhere below the camera. She continues to talk as she types, even faster. “The instructions for this pattern are supplied by the punch card, which is inserted into the lathe pre-activation to configure its chisels.”   


“Once the dowel is carved, you have a totem serving as your ‘key’, which can then be used to ‘unlock’ the card item through the alchemiter. But at this point, I will diverge from my key-making analogy and switch to a bar code analogy. Which is not a terribly strenuous leap to make, since the concepts of a key and a bar code are essentially the same—one being a unique pattern of grooves; the other, of varying black lines.”    


\-- THE ALCHEMITER -- This one caught you off guard. Touche, Lalonde.   


“If you place a cruxite dowel, carved or uncarved, on the alchemiter's small pedestal, its robotic arm will scan the contours with a laser. Hence the bar code analogy. This is the machine's way of reading the data originally imprinted from the card, and transforming that data into a physical object.  


“Though typically, this is not done without expense, I believe. An uncarved dowel results in the creation of a ‘perfectly generic object’, which is a seemingly useless green cube.” Oh gog not those. You’ve had far too many silly hijinks and profoundly bullshit shenanigans involving those cursed cubes. “It costs two units of build grist to make, and I do not advise you to waste resources on it. There appears to be many other varieties of grist, ostensibly used in combinations to create different sorts of items, which possibly offers some insight into the game's use of the term ‘alchemy’.”

“But quite conveniently, there is an exception to this. Creating the item on the pre-punched card costs nothing. This is good, because creating this item turns out to be essential.

“Now that you know this, you can in your own time begin the process. Once you initiate it, naturally there is no going back, so best to be prepared. But you probably shouldn't drag your feet too long. As I mentioned earlier, this is your only means of escape.” As if it planned on it, a rumbling signifies a meteor landing. Rose glances out the window unconsciously for a moment before returning back to looking into the camera.  
She leans forward. “When you're ready, be prepared to follow the steps in the next section swiftly.” 

The video pauses, and Rose’s face blips from the screen with a flash of white. ALl that remains on the screen is a few buttons. Continue, or replay. Supposedly to give time to absorb the information. You lean back in your seat, worrying your green lipsticked lip. Interesting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took a long time mostly because of my terrible habit of procrastination. Whoops.


End file.
